Good Game Design - Collectathons

The birth of 3D gaming spawned a new genre called Collectathons. What exactly makes them so enthralling, and what makes the great ones stand above the rest? Let's talk about it.

[bombojombo]

Not that it was that fun,
but beating Dk64 101% changes a man

[qwertykins]

People who don't play collectathons seem to always think that the collecting is supposed to be where the fun comes from.

While collecting trinkets can be satisfying, they really are not what makes these games fun. The actual function of the collectables is to give you a reason to EXPLORE. They're there to faciliate the adventure, and the fun comes from charm and discovery. Not from playing janitor.

[Fmac]

I like when the worlds in collectathons change whenever you accomplish a minor or major feat. As an example, the sand kingdom in Mario Odyssey starts with ice blocks, teasing you with not being able to access certain spots. After you explore much of the world to fight the boss, once you do the ice melts, giving you a reason to visit again. Seeing the world change constantly from your actions is once of the greatest feelings a video game can offer, and always makes the next romp around the world a unique time

[Dnkfury]

Tooie's worlds felt much more connected than Kazooie, considering each level had an exit that lead to another level rather than the overworld. That was one of my favorite things as a kid. It was so cool exploring Jolly Roger's Lagoon, and then you enter the faucet in the main area and hear Grunty's Industries music.

[captainnintendo]

Is Katmari Damacy technically not the biggest collectathon of all?

[joshmiller]

Did anyone else find all 24 sno globes hidden in this video to unlock the secret bonus video?

[basicoptimalmouse]

I really like Tooie. I disagree with most of the negatives you described; I liked the backtracking component, and I thought there was plenty of significant landmarks, but yeah the note bundling was dumb.
I loved platformers for gaining new abilities that helped you get to different areas, and I think Tooie did it best.
A Hat in Time should be the benchmark for every upcoming collectathon though.

[aaronr.]

Jak and Daxter is great because it avoids backtracking except for a single instance. Jak already has his full moveset at the start of the game so the only thing limiting your ability to explore levels is your skill.

The game is vibrant and cartoony with unique levels that feel like they actually exist in the world, as in they affect other levels and provide insight to the world and its relationship with the precursors.

[Nate-]

Banjo Tooie is underrated. The interlocking of the levels was a cool idea, and I liked revisiting areas with new abilities.

Dk64 was awesome, but the overuse of repetitive bonus games was its main flaw.

[NitroRad]

Ambition is a blessing and a curse. Some games want to aim for this gargantuan scale, but they just don't have the interesting content to fill it up. Odyssey did that really well where Yooka Laylee and Tooie stumbled with it. Excellent video as usual dude!

[bcaudell]

"It feels satisfying to not only collect everything, but to do it quickly and efficiently." Welcome to speedrunning, my friend. I run Banjo-Kazooie, Tooie, and DK64, and they're all immensely satisfying in their own ways.

[doctorcaptainalex]

I think I liked Banjo Tooie more than Kazooie actually for a few reasons. Although the worlds were big and could be confusing, they were all very unique and fun to explore. Witchy World was an such a cool level. And back tracking to some when you finally learned the new move so you could finally get those last few jiggies made me feel like you were really progressing as a character and made the world feel really connected. But most importantly were the side characters. Every level had new unique characters to the world that you met along the way and had to help to get the jiggies. I guess it made the world feel full of life and dynamic? Maybe that is the right word? Like it was not just Jamjar and Mumbo as your only friends in the world, it was all the interesting characters that you met and helped along the way. Though I will say Grunty's Industries was definitely more confusing than it needed to be.

[GamebooAdvance]

I've always found it odd how people hate on tooie for needing power ups for older areas, but praise metroidvanias for doing literally the exact same thing

[Redchocobo]

One thing that really caught my attention is how banjo tooie is made into a colectathon by the simple fact that it's a sequel to Kazooie. I, personally, don't play tooie as a colectathon at all. To me, it's one of the first 3d open world games ever. And it's a damn good one at that!
The collectables aren't really about collecting when you think about it. Jinjos are being rescued, jiggies serve as keys, just like in BK. And notes are your upgrade currency!
It's not about completing every level, it's about solving the puzzles of doing what you can at a given time! The notes don't guide you in your tour, because you're supposed to be your own guide!
Maybe it's just me, but it really feels incredibly reasonable to see colectathons as precursors to open-world. They end up fulfilling different roles when it comes to gaming, but there's a reason why exploring in Breath of the Wild feels so much better than in LoZ or aLttP. And if you look at BK and BT like that, it makes perfect sense that BT wouldn't feel like an amazing colectathon. It's because it decided to do take a different approach that resulted in a different experience!

[TheCartoonGamer]

Some of my favourites are Banjo-Kazooie, Tooie, Mario Odyseey and more recenty, Spyro. I really liked how Spyro had tight, compact levels that could be completed in 10-15 minutes, and still had multiple braching paths. Every time I saw a new set of gems I went "Oooh, what's over here?" and it was so much fun and easy to naigate and explore.

[_Braised]

Conker's Bad Fur Day was my kind of platformer. The collectables included:
1) Wads of money
...and that's it. Now you're talkin' my language...

[Whirlwhind]

Eh, I still vastly prefer Tooie to Kazooie. I actually *liked* how big those worlds were and the backtracking I thought was really neat because nearly all the worlds were connected to one another and how some tasks done in one world would affect another.

In my eyes, Tooie puts a lot more emphasis on exploration with its open world compared to Kazooie's confined playgrounds, and it's for that reason that I would happily pick Banjo-Tooie back up at any time.

[mman.]

Fun fact: Fungi forest was supposed to be for Banjo Kazooie but got released on dk 64
Imagine what level could have been for dk 64 instead of fungi forest, and how Banjo kazooie would be different

[KevinCow]

The point at about 6:08, about Banjo placing notes in lines to guide you, is one I've heard a lot, especially in regards to Banjo vs. Yooka. And I have to assume that every single person who makes that point either hasn't actually played Banjo in a decade or is blinded by the fact that they've played Banjo so much that they don't even need to think about where the notes are anymore.

Banjo has tons of instances where notes aren't placed in a nice line that guides you along. There are plenty of points where they're placed on all the corners of a platform, or on each individual frond of a palm tree, or at the end of a perilously thin platform that serves no purpose but to hold a note, or slightly out of view in a room with a fixed camera angle, or literally any time you have to collect notes while fighting with the terrible swimming controls. (And not entirely note placement related, but bonus points for the original release, where you had to do it all over again if you died or left the world without collecting all of the notes. Hooray for dangling notes above instadeath traps in Rusty Bucket Bay.)

And Yooka has plenty of instances where the quills _do_ form a line to guide you. There are certainly some annoying quills like the one at 6:34, but that's not the norm. Furthermore, due to the increased draw distance possible with modern hardware, a line of quills isn't the only way to guide the player anymore. A single bouncing golden quill placed on a ledge that you can spot from far away can accomplish the exact same thing.

I dunno. I just generally disagree with every single time you used Yooka as an example of bad collectathon design in this video.

Yooka's controls aren't as fun as Mario Odyssey or A Hat in Time, but he starts out moving quickly and jumping high, and he just gets even faster and able to jump higher as you progress, ultimately culminating in the ability to just straight up fly whenever you feel like it. Compare to Banjo or Jak, who have to constantly Talon Trot or long jump to move at anywhere near a decent speed, have to crouch jump or ledge grab to reach most platforms, and barely upgrade their speed and jumping abilities by the end of the game. And I love Banjo and Jak, but man, I've always thought they felt sluggish even back in the day.

And I love Yooka's levels (except the swamp). They have a bunch of landmarks that I was immediately interested in checking out, and the expansion mechanic meant they could be huge but not immediately overwhelming. They seemed to have some sort of Pagie, mini-game, or even just quills in every corner of every map. If it wasn't for Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey coming out in the same year, I'd say Yooka was the first game to properly scratch my exploration itch in a long time.

Yooka's got issues, and I admit I'm probably more forgiving of a lot of them because I make games and understand the limitations they had and compromises they had to make due to their budget and time constraints. But pretty much every complaint about the game that compares it unfavorably to Banjo seems to be based on a version of Banjo that doesn't exist. And even with the valid complaints, it absolutely doesn't deserve to be used as the constant "What not to do" counter-example in a video like this.

[graysongdl]

I think the one area A Hat in Time drops the ball is that yarn collection progress isn't tracked, and there's no way to find more without wandering, so there's no way to know how much you haven't found. Which is a shame, because the fact every single ball of yarn has its own little challenge or fun hiding spot associated with it makes me want to collect them all!